Nazis in Newcastle

[Spearmint Rhino]

The morning after seeing The Specials play their first concert since 1981, I was wandering around central Newcastle when I heard a load of boisterous male chanting going on.

At first I assumed it must be some early arrivals for a football match at St James' Park, but as I got closer, at the foot of Grey's Monument, I saw a couple of hundred shaven-headed neo-nazis with English flags chanting "ENGLAND! ENGLAND!", "PAKIS OUT!" and calling a smaller group of anti-nazi protesters, separated from the nazis by a thin yellow line of police, "SCUM! SCUM!"

I worried for a moment that the presence in Newcastle of hundreds of skinheads for the Specials gig and the following morning's 'festivities' were somehow connected, but it turned out to be a coincidence: this was, someone told me, St George's Day, and the nazis were awaiting a speech by some local BNP candidate (I didn't stick around long enough to hear it).

Actually, you could even tell them apart visually: the skins at the Specials gig were stylishly-dressed, whereas the cretins at Grey's Monument were in rubbish sportswear and football shirts.

While I stood and watched, an Asian guy walked past and said to me "There's going to be bloodshed, there's going to be deaths!", and spat on the floor in disgust. I didn't have a chance to reply. I really hope he didn't look at me and think I was on the 'wrong' side.

While I walked away, a distressed woman came running up to me. "You're a journalist, aren't you?" She went on to tell me that one of her friends, who was doing nothing more criminal than waving an anti-racist banner, had been manhandled into the back of a van by coppers, who had earlier been, in her words, "jokin' on" with the nazis.

When she complained about the treatment of her friend, she'd been warned "Shut up or you'll be next".

She wanted me to spread the word about this in my professional capacity, but since I'm just a pop critic, this will have to do instead.

Y'know, I've seen them on telly and I've read about them in the papers, but I don't think I've ever seen a proper gathering of neo-nazis in the flesh before.

What with one thing and another, this particular trip to Tyneside felt like stepping into an episode of Ashes To Ashes.

Photos to follow...

[Bruno]

Nazis in Newcastle

Were there swastikas? I don't get neo-Nazis at all. Seems like it'd be perfectly possible and politically preferable to be ultra right-wing xenophobes without invoking Hitler.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Nazis in Newcastle

I didn't see any swastikas (it was all Cross of St George flags), but I didn't get close enough to check out their tattoos...

[The Contented Penguin]

Nazis in Newcastle

This sounds all too common unfortunately. I've been involved in quite a few anti-fascist protests and the Police do tend to see the anti-racist campaigners as the enemy far more than they do the far right groups.

I know some people will excuse away Police behavior (as evidenced in the last few weeks) as a 'few bad eggs' but in my experience, there is a nasty culture within the Police that needs smashing. Some regional forces are better than others but the culture of the Police force seems to be the same everywhere.

The question is, I suppose: Does working in the Police service lead employees to this culture, or is it that these people are naturally attracted to the Police? Chicken and egg scenario I know.

[evilC]

Nazis in Newcastle

The Contented Penguin wrote:

This sounds all too common unfortunately. I've been involved in quite a few anti-fascist protests and the Police do tend to see the anti-racist campaigners as the enemy far more than they do the far right groups.

I know some people will excuse away Police behavior (as evidenced in the last few weeks) as a 'few bad eggs' but in my experience, there is a nasty culture within the Police that needs smashing. Some regional forces are better than others but the culture of the Police force seems to be the same everywhere.

The question is, I suppose: Does working in the Police service lead employees to this culture, or is it that these people are naturally attracted to the Police? Chicken and egg scenario I know.

I have seen numerous photos - some in newspapers and some on the covers of books, even - of the police *escorting* the Nazi protests; actually flanking them in columns on either side. However, I can't ever actually recall seeing the police take similar tactics when policing anti-racism events or similar.

I know it might sound like a foolish leap of logic to some on here, but this as much as anything leads me to believe that racism isn't just institutional in this country - it's almost constitutional. There is someone very high up in the 'forces of law and order' that has given the instruction "you will actively protect these people, but actively attack these ones".

[Wyatt Earp]

Nazis in Newcastle

No, I doubt that. I think the problem's cultural, more than anything. An officer's sympathies naturally drift towards authoritarian political ideas.

[Mitch]

Nazis in Newcastle

I'd go along with that. On an anecdotal level, the police officers I work with are all natural (big and little C)onservatives. There's a nasty bullying streak which seems to be common as well.

But I wouldn't have thought for a second that they are all BNP sympathisers.

[hobbes]

Nazis in Newcastle

I only know two rozzers. They're both fab and not big or small C conservative at all.
They may well be the exception though.

[Hofzinser]

Nazis in Newcastle

I know it might sound like a foolish leap of logic to some on here, but this as much as anything leads me to believe that racism isn't just institutional in this country - it's almost constitutional. There is someone very high up in the 'forces of law and order' that has given the instruction "you will actively protect these people, but actively attack these ones".

That would still make it insitutional, wouldn't it?

Anyway, it's just what the police do when there's a march involving people who are likely to be attacked - whatever the cause of the marchers, it's the polices job to shield them from would-be attackers. I saw them do exactly the same about 5 years ago in Glasgow for a march by lots of fully burkha-ed up Muslim women who were marching in solidarity with Saddam Hussein (and I don't mean that they were just marching against the war or anything - every banner they were carrying had big pictures of him, and captioned with things like "Saddam Hussein, saviour of Islam").

Not, obviously, that I'm arguing that the police are always, or ever, without fault when it comes to this sort of thing - but protecting marchers from would-be attackers isn't a sign of their racism, insititutional or otherwise.

[Ginger Yellow]

Nazis in Newcastle

The one copper I know has actually become more liberal since joining the force. But he was very conservative before.

[The Purple Cow]

Nazis in Newcastle

"This sounds all too common unfortunately. I've been involved in quite a few anti-fascist protests and the Police do tend to see the anti-racist campaigners as the enemy far more than they do the far right groups."

T'was ever thus. I remember back in the R.A.R days, and specifically on the day of the Digbeth riots, the police would show you their N.F. lapel pins on the reverse side of their uniform lapels. Likewise while sitting in their vans waiting for action they would write N.F. in the condensation on the van windows. They made no secret of where their sympathies lay.

[Gerontophile]

Nazis in Newcastle

Of the 4 policemen I know, only one is conservative (of either 'c'), and he is the eldest.

Admittedly, all are gay, and they have to do things which rankle, or go against their 'politics', but fuck it, they chose to be policemen. Or should I say police people?

[Guest]

Nazis in Newcastle

evilC wrote:

I know it might sound like a foolish leap of logic to some on here, but this as much as anything leads me to believe that racism isn't just institutional in this country - it's almost constitutional. There is someone very high up in the 'forces of law and order' that has given the instruction "you will actively protect these people, but actively attack these ones".

I have some sympathies with you here, but I'm sure you made a derogatory reference on the old board to Tim Westwood and "small-town wiggers", and it's that kind of casual pop-cultural speak which I think justifies and leads to something far deeper. If you speak in such terms, then in my view you're playing into BNP hands, and coming very close - however flippant you may think you're being - to justifying cultural apartheid and narrowing people's freedoms to adopt whatever culture they want, and we know what can start from there (I know it's rather cliched to play the Nazi-view-of-jazz card, but I think that example should teach us to be wary of invoking racial terms and playing along with a Daily Mail view of what people from certain backgrounds should and shouldn't do, which is what the hard-left "authenticity" view of black-originated pop culture unfortunately does, without meaning to).

I read somewhere that an official police magazine in 1978 spoke approvingly of the NF as believing in "solid family values", or somesuch (that was before Thatcher stole their thunder), so I've absolutely no reason to disbelieve The Purple Cow. Problem is, the police are damned if they do and damned if they don't - what would happen if a neo-Nazi demonstration was unguarded and undefended, on the grounds that to police a demonstration by such people is to endorse and approve of them? You certainly don't need to be a Mail writer or reader to think the outcome would be horrific.

And I don't think it is the job of white leftists to dictate what black people should or should not do, or impose their own sub-Marxist desires on them - I don't think you, or I, would have had the right to refer to black police officers as "race traitors" as some white demonstrators did during a riot outside the BNP's then HQ in 1993, anymore than we'd have had the right to say the same of Lionel Richie, or Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, or whoever. But what I think is a problem is when police show clear sympathies to far-right demonstrators and violently and aggressively abuse their power against left-wing counter-demonstrators, and I agree absolutely that this happens and is a problem which may, I fear, have roots too deep to counter.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Nazis in Newcastle

what would happen if a neo-Nazi demonstration was unguarded and undefended

Only one way to find out.

[Carcass]

Nazis in Newcastle

Lionel Richie is a traitor to gravity. Owwwww!

[Er Liquidatore]

Nazis in Newcastle

Hahaha

[Tactical Genius]

Nazis in Newcastle

No dissing of Westwood please.

[evilC]

Nazis in Newcastle

The Prodigal wrote:

evilC wrote:

I know it might sound like a foolish leap of logic to some on here, but this as much as anything leads me to believe that racism isn't just institutional in this country - it's almost constitutional. There is someone very high up in the 'forces of law and order' that has given the instruction "you will actively protect these people, but actively attack these ones".

I have some sympathies with you here, but I'm sure you made a derogatory reference on the old board to Tim Westwood and "small-town wiggers", and it's that kind of casual pop-cultural speak which I think justifies and leads to something far deeper. If you speak in such terms, then in my view you're playing into BNP hands, and coming very close - however flippant you may think you're being - to justifying cultural apartheid and narrowing people's freedoms to adopt whatever culture they want, and we know what can start from there (I know it's rather cliched to play the Nazi-view-of-jazz card, but I think that example should teach us to be wary of invoking racial terms and playing along with a Daily Mail view of what people from certain backgrounds should and shouldn't do, which is what the hard-left "authenticity" view of black-originated pop culture unfortunately does, without meaning to).

I read somewhere that an official police magazine in 1978 spoke approvingly of the NF as believing in "solid family values", or somesuch (that was before Thatcher stole their thunder), so I've absolutely no reason to disbelieve The Purple Cow. Problem is, the police are damned if they do and damned if they don't - what would happen if a neo-Nazi demonstration was unguarded and undefended, on the grounds that to police a demonstration by such people is to endorse and approve of them? You certainly don't need to be a Mail writer or reader to think the outcome would be horrific.

And I don't think it is the job of white leftists to dictate what black people should or should not do, or impose their own sub-Marxist desires on them - I don't think you, or I, would have had the right to refer to black police officers as "race traitors" as some white demonstrators did during a riot outside the BNP's then HQ in 1993, anymore than we'd have had the right to say the same of Lionel Richie, or Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, or whoever. But what I think is a problem is when police show clear sympathies to far-right demonstrators and violently and aggressively abuse their power against left-wing counter-demonstrators, and I agree absolutely that this happens and is a problem which may, I fear, have roots too deep to counter.

This was a very well-written reply.

I have been debating with myself whether to reply and, if so, how.

The thing is, if I don't respond it will look like a tacit admission of (somehow racist) guilt. If I do, it will look like a case of "doth protest too much".

All I can say is that if you think that by trying to take the piss out of Ali G-alikes, I am condoning racism, cultural stereotyping or a desire to exert some kind of social control over people's freedom of choice, then... then you are very silly.

Your third paragraph also seems to imply that alot of the behaviour described there is something I have in some way either expressed or condoned. It is not.

I am quite upset by all this. I would say 'offended' but the way I feel about this at the moment is not even as rational as 'offended'. I'm just rather pissed off and exasperated. I hope that the people who know me on here know that racism is something I am not inclined to. That's as much as I can say, really, in order to defend myself.

I expect there may be an ongoing debate about this.

[Wyatt Earp]

Nazis in Newcastle

I didn't understand what the Prodigal wrote, but if he's accusing you of racism (is he?) he's an arse.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Nazis in Newcastle

This was a very well-written reply.

And that's an unduly generous, not to mention inaccurate, response.

Why do you think someone mocking white kids in small towns who emulate marketeering, performing arts-trained 'gangster' showmen feeds into the BNP's cause, Prodigal?

And where the hell does this bit come from:

And I don't think it is the job of white leftists to dictate what black people should or should not do, or impose their own sub-Marxist desires on them

?

Which white person, leftist or otherwise, did that?

[Wyatt Earp]

Nazis in Newcastle

Yeah, I mean on the face of it it looks like utter bollocks. People are perfectly "free" to "adopt whatever culture they want", and Clive is perfectly "free" to take the piss out of them if, in so doing, they fall (in his opinion) into affectation or superficiality.

He's not "narrowing their freedom", unless they (a) read OTF, and (b) say to themselves, on reading Clive's posting, "Yeah, ackshulee, now da' evil C geezah mentions i', aa sound WELL rubbish innit."

Christ, even then he isn't.

Playing into the hands of the BNP? That's an accusation I'd find it hard, in Clive's position, to forgive, and one I think should be withdrawn.

(That's unless I've failed to understand it, which to be honest is quaa' laaklee.)

You'll be saying next I can't laugh at that preposterous white rasta who hands out gig flyers at Turnpike Lane. I didn't fight in two world wars to be told that.

[Wyatt Earp]

Nazis in Newcastle

And, right, how does anything Clive may have said about smalltown white-boy black-culture wannabes invalidate what he may have to say about racism in the police? I really need some help on that one.

[E10 Rifle]

Nazis in Newcastle

Is there much of a difference between a "sub-marxist" desire and a marxist one?

[Spearmint Rhino]

Nazis in Newcastle

Why on Earth... wrote:

You'll be saying next I can't laugh at that preposterous white rasta who hands out gig flyers at Turnpike Lane. I didn't fight in two world wars to be told that.

Is that the "Aba Shanti!" guy?

Wow, he's been around London as long as I have (i.e. since the late 80s at least).

[The Purple Cow]

Nazis in Newcastle

There are two Aba Shanti's.

The one I knew was from Bristol, he came up to Balsall Heath to do Sound Systems in the late 70's and early 80's. Then there's also a London one.